Lix and Mouetta had witnessed Freda’s arrest themselves, and knew she hadn’t laid a hand on any militiaman. Lix had said they ought to contact Freda’s lawyers, to act as witnesses, but hadn’t done so yet. Two waiters at the Debit Bar had already put themselves forward, so perhaps there wasn’t any point in stepping into the spotlight. He cannot say how fearful he’s become that if he speaks for Freda at her trial, then all will be revealed about how he’d tipped off the militia that they’d find the student activist in Freda’s room that night. Such information never disappears. It bides its time behind the scenes. So Lix gave his practiced, helpless smile as his excuse for hanging back. And now he gives the smile again, to say how sorry he is that his wife’s choice of restaurant will be deferred until another night. Mouetta shrugs. The Debit Bar is home-away-from-home for him.
The maître d’ rests his cigar on a dry sill to smoke itself for a few moments, and leads the couple to their preferred corner table, away from mirrors and doors. Lix takes the seat that lets him set his back against the room, as usual. They are, so far, the only customers. Mouetta thinks she has felt the first of many thousand kicks.
THE OWLS, the hawks, and the peregrines come to the city in the colder months, as do the gulls these days, drawn in by thermal banks and easy pickings. The temperature is slightly higher here — our cozy, gas-warmed rooms, the car exhaust, the street lighting, the millions of breaths exhaled each hour keep frosts at bay — and so the rodents and the beetles can earn their living for a month or so longer than their country cousins and provide the raptors with their winter meals. The daytime birds of prey prefer the riverbanks, the highway shoulders, and the parks, but most of all they love Navigation Island with its cover of trees and its grasses rich in food. The gulls raid dumps and garbage cans.
The owls, though, like the nighttime hunting grounds of yards and roofs and patios where they can treat themselves to household tidbits such as tile roaches, hearth crickets, larder mice and rats.
It is a larder mouse that Rosa sees tonight. She’s lined her dolls up by the sliding window to the balcony, already bored, but keen to do what her mother, An, has told her to — keep out of the bedroom for half an hour — because she’ll be rewarded if she does. Her mother keeps a jar of chocolates. And so with the great unconscious gravity of a five-year-old, Rosa makes the minutes pass. She rearranges all her dolls, by favorites, by size, by age. She has them sitting in a group. She has them with their noses pressed against the window. She presses her own nose up against the window to see what they can see. They can see a little animal amongst the pots, a little cuddly toy no longer than her mother’s thumb gnawing at a loaf of rye bread that they’ve thrown out for the birds. It’s made a cavern for itself so that only its gray tail hangs free. Rosa thinks she’ll bring the mouse indoors and play with it. She’ll introduce it to her dolls. Too late. A dark reflection on the glass, a great wide bird, flat-faced and ghostlike, hits the bread and hits the glass with its spoon wing. The noise it makes is hardly louder than a falling piece of cloth. But — a heartbeat later — the bird has disappeared, the cave of bread has rolled across the balcony, a pot is lying on its side and spilling soil.
Rosa gathers up her dolls and puts them safely on the far side of the room. She knows she’s witnessed something memorable and frightening, much more important than the chocolate jar and its rewards. She doesn’t know the proper words. She only knows “a great big bird,” “a little animal.” Still, she hurries to the bedroom door, where her mother’s friend has dropped his vast black shoes, and goes in. They’re on the bed. Her mother is not dressed. Nor is the man. They seem to be characters from television plays, entwined and shivering and damp. But nothing Rosa can see in there, and nothing that her mother says, could be more startling or sad than what has happened on the balcony. She is in tears. Her mother has to let her into the bed, amid the odd and disconcerting smells, and fake belief in what she takes as Rosa’s jealous lie.
The man is leaving anyway. He’s slept enough. He’s getting dressed. Rosa has to tell him where he’s left his shoes and where the toilet is. “Can I still have a chocolate?” she asks her mother, and then, “Can I phone Lech and Karol?” She’s sure her half brothers will want to know at once about the death scene on the balcony.
LECH AND KAROL are not home. Alicja, their mother, has a Lesniak Trading creditors meeting to attend. Now that her father has retired she is in charge. So she has driven her two sons by Lix out of Beyond and into town for tennis coaching at the new floodlit courts on Navigation Island. Karol is the natural sportsman of the two and already taller. He’s on his college football team, has diving ribbons and vaulting cups, but most excels at racket sports. He will be fourteen in a month and then eligible to represent the city in the junior tennis leagues. His elder brother, Lech, does not excel at anything, except the competitions of the tongue.
The tennis courts are not playable. Clay is an unreliable surface in the best of times. The afternoon rain has left its puddles on the serving lines and made the courts too slippery. Their mother has arranged to pick them up at ten. Now they have the evening to themselves, in town, and not one single Lesniak around to stop them from having fun.
Lech has the matches and the cigarettes. A girl from their tennis group has money they can spend. Her friend has tokens for the streetcar. The four of them walk across the river on the reconstructed pedestrian bridge, coughing from the cigarette smoke which, oddly, makes the boys’ cocks go hard. They’ve never been alone with girls like these before. In point of fact, it’s not the girls who make them hard, but nicotine. Tobacco is an aphrodisiac when you’re their age.
Karol hasn’t much to say. He is good with rackets, not with words. Yet Lech has found his expertise. Before the evening’s out, he thinks, if he can lose his brother and the other girl, then he can try his luck with the one who has the tokens for the streetcar. She’s prettier than anyone he’s ever seen before. If he cannot steal a kiss from her before ten o’clock, then, he fears, his nose will bleed, his heart will burst out of his chest. He lights another cigarette. They cough like foxes in the night.
IT’S ONLY AFTERNOON in Queens. George is cruising in a cab along the Van Wyck Expressway on the way to JFK for his early evening flight back home. His pregnant girlfriend, Katherine, is at his side. She’ll see his mother for the first time at the trial, and meet his famous father, too. She’s seen the videos. She recognizes George in Lix’s craggy head.
She’s nervous, nervous of the flying, nervous about her pregnancy, nervous of Freda, but currently most nervous of the New York cab. The driver has a brutal head. He’s brutal with the brakes. She holds on to her boyfriend’s arm and braces her feet against the cab floor, expecting the worst. She wishes she hadn’t volunteered to go.
“Think of it as a holiday,” George says. He sounds American. He has the vowels. “There won’t be proper holidays, not when the baby’s small. So make the most of this.”
He tells her how they’ll spend their time, the walks along the old embankment to the medieval square, a visit to the island and the MeCCA galleries, a cake and coffee at the Palm & Orchid Coffee House, free seats to the theater “if Father’s doing anything.” My God, he thinks, there isn’t much to do if they’re reduced to sitting through another disaster like The Devotee. His city’s only worth a two-day trip and they’ll be there for ten. His mother’s trial will surely only last an afternoon. Then what? “We could go to the zoo,” he adds, and then looks out to count the avenues of Ozone Park as JFK draws close. The zoo, in fact, is quite a good idea, he thinks. He hasn’t seen the city zoo since he was eighteen, New Year’s Day 2001, when he met his father and his two half brothers for the first time, and Father missed an opportunity by courting Mouetta instead of courting him. A disappointment, like the play.